Andrii Viankin, participant at the AO GCP course in December 2017 in Davos

​Thought-provoking lectures, meaningful subject matter and perfectly organized workshops—as well as sufficiently spaced breaks and engaging discussion between lectures—made the 2017 AO Good Clinical Practice (GCP) course an event to remember for AOTrauma member Andrii Viankin, a 31-year-old, fifth-year orthopedics and traumatology resident at Asklepios Harzklinik Goslar in Germany.

The 12-hour course, conducted December 8–9, 2018 in Davos, is an initiative of AO Clinical Investigation and Documentation (AOCID) and is integrated into the curriculum of the AO Foundation’s Program for Education and Excellence in Research (AOPEER).

The opportunity to sharpen his GCP skills was too good for Viankin to pass up, he says.

“After training at AOTrauma in Germany, which I first visited in September 2017, my enthusiasm for its quality was so great that I immediately decided to become a member of AOTrauma,” says Viankin, a native of Ukraine. “Unfortunately, you cannot afford to take part in all of the programs, but one of them aroused so much interest in me that I could not resist, despite the distance and the lack of time.”

Diving into an exciting world

That course, he explains, was the AO GCP course.

“When I was still working in my home country of Ukraine, I took part in various clinical trials,” he says. “This was extremely interesting work which had a great influence on my professional development and played a certain role in the fact that I migrated to Germany five years ago. Thanks to AOTrauma Germany, I had a chance to dive into this exciting world again.”

Viankin says the official course launch began on a Friday at noon, giving participants traveling from afar the chance to recover after their long journeys. Officially opening the course was Denise Hess, AOCID Manager Clinical Education, who introduced participants to the teaching team of two AOPEER network teachers and five teachers from AOCID.

“After introducing the basic principles of clinical research, the different aspects of clinical studies were explored over the next one and a half days,” says Viankin. “Very convincing was the combination of theoretical foundations and their implementation in perfectly organized workshops.”

Viankin found the course’s role-playing games, in which participants could engage as researchers, patients or even family members—especially engaging.

“The staged scenes were actively watched and commented on by our teachers and other participants,” he explains.

Furthermore, Viankin appreciated the “creative space for learning and discovery” facilitated by the AOPEER team.

“It was nice to share my own experiences with the other participants in a training group and to hear stories from the other group members,” he says, adding that the lectures were thought provoking, the subject matter was meaningful, and the workshops were perfectly organized. “The well-placed breaks and exciting discussions between lectures hardly allowed gaps in our concentration.”

All in all, the GCP course more than met Viankin’s expectations.

“The perfect organization, the very friendly interaction between speakers and participants, and finally the very pleasant atmosphere makes me look back over these very positive two days,” he says of the GCP course which helped participants—primarily from trauma and orthopaedics—understand GCP guidelines and the ISO 14155 standard for conducting clinical studies. The sold-out 2017 GCP course drew participants from 16 nations representing four continents: Australia, Europe, Asia and North America.

Andrii Viankin discussing the research topics with other participants at the GCP course breakout session

Learn more about AOPEER

AOPEER is a cross-divisional research education program supporting surgeons in getting up to speed in every aspect of their clinical research. Through AOPEER’s online learning and face-to-face events, interested surgeons can leverage a diverse set of learning resource in order to learn how to carry out and publish research.

The next AOPEER event is a Principles of Clinical Research course on April 7–8, in Cambridge, United Kingdom. The course objective is to introduce the principles of clinical research, both for humans and animals, including skills and knowledge on why and how to do research, how to build a good research environment, and where to find additional resources, tools, and reference packages to support a research project.